Danville: One arrested in threatening graffiti; hundreds of students stay home

By Rick Hurd and Karina Ioffee

Contra Costa Times

Posted:
05/08/2014 08:32:03 AM PDT

Updated:
05/08/2014 04:21:57 PM PDT

DANVILLE -- Hundreds of students were kept home Thursday morning after graffiti warning of violence was found at two schools, officials said, even after one person was arrested in connection with the threats.

Classes went on as planned Thursday, with additional security at affected schools, and school officials reported no incidents.

Danville police arrested a juvenile suspect Wednesday in connection with a message that read "12 people, May 8" at Charlotte Wood Middle School. A similar message was also found at John Baldwin Elementary School.

Three messages were discovered between the two schools, with two of them in a unique shade of yellow paint and one of them with Sharpie pen, prompting an increased police presence Thursday.

Police said they were treating two of the messages as "copycat" crimes.

"It appears to be somebody trying to rile people up," Danville police Chief Steve Simpkins said of the original message. "We have zero supporting evidence that any of the threats are credible, but the expectations -- and rightly so -- are that we need to treat this as seriously as possible. These are our kids at these schools."

In addition to the juvenile suspect arrested, the police were following leads in their quest to find whoever left the other two messages, Simpkins said.

Attendance was down by about half at both schools, as anxious parents opted to keep their children at home.

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According to Terry Koehne, a spokesman for the San Ramon Valley Unified School District, 269 students at Charlotte Wood were absent Thursday, along with approximately half at John Baldwin Elementary. The latter school is located on Brookside Drive.

At nearby Greenberg Elementary School, located on Harlan Drive in the same neighborhood as Baldwin, 137 students were absent, Koehne said. Two Danville police officers patrolled the Charlotte Wood campus, while one officer was stationed at Baldwin Elementary, officials said.

"We're trying to treat it as a normal school day as best we can," Koehne said.

According to Christopher George, the principal of Charlotte Wood, the first threat was found May 1 on a sign facing El Capitan Drive, where the campus is located. Similar graffiti was then found on a part of a bridge near the campus, according to several student reports that George received.

A similar threatening message was scrawled with a Sharpie pen in the boys bathroom of Baldwin Elementary, Koehne said.

Lisa Zylstra, a parent at Charlotte Wood Middle School, said her child was attending classes on Thursday.

"I'm confident that the district is doing whatever necessary to protect our kids," she said.

The school district will not lose money from the absences.

Staff writer Katie Nelson contributed to this report. Contact Rick Hurd at 925-945-4789, and follow him at Twitter.com/3rderh. Contact Karina Ioffee at 650-576-9626, and follow her at Twitter.com/kioffee.